A brilliant inventor modestly celebrates his most recent creation's genesis, a free-thinking figure that consciously reckons with independent advancing foresight.
But as he sets off to rest, his apprentice walks in to tidy his animate workshop, and he encounters the enlivened toy who turns out to champion corrupt self-interest.
The toy passionately convinces him to dishonourably steal their benefactor's book of ideas, and create a toy shop of his own to slyly compete and wickedly conjure.
The inventor is thoroughly devastated upon discovering his sudden misfortune, and loses the ability to create, his mind stricken with disbelief.
His business slowly fades and his wife and daughter grow more estranged with each and every glum passing day, 30 years pass in fact in total depression borderline madness crippled ambition.
His former apprentice has gaudily emerged as their realm's dazzling preeminent toymaker, furtively driven by the conniving contraption who never relents lets go subsides.
But so much time has woefully passed that another generation has nimbly ballooned, and Jeronicus's (Forest Whitaker) granddaughter soon comes curiously and cleverly and ebullient and pensively calling (Madalen Mills as Journey).
Has she arrived in time to help grandfather realize his last vital dream?, before the bank reluctantly forecloses, on Christmas day, the timeline's obscene.
Fortunately, she's incredibly gifted, and at a young age rivals gramp's brilliance, and is therefore able to adroitly assist even if her ideas are initially unwelcome.
The most important thing he's lost is the belief he once had in himself, which is why his latest idea won't jive, won't exceedingly generate awestruck wondrous je ne sais pas uncontrived.
It's more like a film that takes place at Christmas than a supple salute to the season, although traditional spiritual surges assuredly sanctify seasonal synergies.
I suppose it's a sign of the times, that an ingenious toy would be full of deception, as opposed to lighthearted wonder, it's certainly not Cabbage Patch or My Buddy.
Too much of an emphasis on immoral resolve in recent years to be shocked by a malicious toy, it's like themes oft reserved for horror have been whitewashed to critique widespread greed.
The new toy in question resembles E.T so perhaps it represents a manifest willingness to move past blunt impulses, and return to the less self-obsessed guidance of the 1980s, Foucauldian investigation pending.
Does Jingle Jangle's playful synthesis of machine and spirit foreshadow upcoming advances in artificial intelligence?
The rise of robotic humanism?
Computationally coaxing.
Hopefully not, hopefully hearts and hearths continue to flourish organic.
There's nothing quite like biodiversity.
Born of ancient mutation.
